OART – UT 1058
Abrupt Climate Change is offered through the Open Arts Department at NYU Tisch
Statement of Purpose
On June 23 1988, NASA’s Dr. James Hansen testified before Congress in his capacity as a scientist that the earth’s climate was changing due to anthropogenic effects. Since that time the scientific community has come to a consensus that Earth’s climate is changing. The consensus is that this change is linked to the burning of fossil fuels and their concomitant release of gaseous by-products into our atmosphere. What is not known is the rate of acceleration of the change which is increasing. All literature references positive feedback mechanisms that will increase our warming climate in the years to come.
In 2004 a US Senate Committee defined abrupt climate change to be, ”a change in the climate that occurs so rapidly or unexpectedly that human or natural systems have difficulty adapting to the climate as changed.” Ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica possess distinct layering where seasonal snowfalls compress to form ice with distinctive chemical and physical characteristics. This data indicates that there have been at least twenty instances where the earth’s climate has changed 15˚ Fahrenheit (8˚ C) within a 10 year period before recorded history. As of October 9, atmospheric carbon dioxide measured 408.55 ppm (parts per million), on January 26, 412.96 ppm. This measurement is the highest concentration of critical greenhouse gas in three million years. At that time our planet was nearly five degrees Fahrenheit warmer and sea levels were thirty-two to sixty-five feet higher than they are today. Governments and human beings neither possess the experience or technology to successfully sustain life as we have come to know it during a period of rapidly changing conditions whose sustained new global normal is without historical precedent.
Scientists are not artists. Sanguine reporting of painstakingly gathered information is the realm of the scientist. It is the artist who is able to — and who must — bridge the divide between science and the public through creative story-telling.
Abrupt Climate Change (ACC) is offered to students who are interested in understating the impact of a radically altering climate upon their lives and communicating this information to society through artistic media of their choice. To better prepare for their increasingly uncertain future, students will hear from academic experts in business, law, mathematical, physical and social sciences and then create artistic responses to humanity’s greatest existential threat.
If you are interested in learning how to think about and prepare to succeed as the earth’s climate changes during your lifetime, this class could be for you.
This is the second in a series of related courses that are unique to Tisch and neither compete with or replicate existing classes.
Abrupt Climate Change is open to all NYU students.
Peter Terezakis
Associate Arts Professor, Tisch NYU
January 28, 2020
Failing to Prepare is Preparing to Fail. — Benjamin Franklin, 1706 -1790